A 3.0
Seismic & structural
Soft-storey retrofit, foundation replacement, shear walls and moment frames on buildings put up before anybody wrote the rules they are now judged by.
Construction End to end 5–14 months
A 3.1 Schedule
How long this actually takes
Drawn at real proportion. If the bars before construction look long, that is the point of publishing them — it is the part of the calendar nobody warns you about.
Schedule Seismic & structural
| Phase | Duration | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Engineering CP | 10 weeks | |
| Entitlement | not required | |
| Permit CP | 10 weeks | |
| Construction CP | 18 weeks | |
| Closeout | 3 weeks |
- Design
- Entitlement
- Permit
- Construction
- Closeout
- On the critical path
About 9 months end to end, and the entitlement bar has disappeared entirely: structural work that does not change the exterior is not a Planning matter. This is the shortest and most predictable schedule on this site, which is worth knowing if you have a compliance deadline.
CP marks a phase on the critical path — one that moves the finish date if it slips. The critical path is marked with an outline and a label rather than a colour, so it is still readable in black and white and to a colour-blind reader. Every schedule on this site, side by side, is on the schedule page.
This is the scope where the schedule finally works in your favour, because most of it is not discretionary. Structural work that does not change the outside of the building is reviewed by Building rather than fought over at Planning, and the path is shorter and far more predictable.
It is also the scope that matters most and photographs worst. A moment frame in a garage is not a thing anybody shows visitors. It is the reason the three floors above it are still there after an earthquake.
San Francisco’s housing stock is mostly pre-1930 wood frame, and a large share of it has the same weakness: a ground floor with a garage opening, a few windows, and not much wall left to resist lateral force, carrying two or three storeys of house. That is a soft storey, and the city has spent a decade requiring owners of qualifying buildings to fix it.
Underneath that sits a second problem that is less talked about: the foundation. Plenty of buildings in this city are on unreinforced concrete, on brick, or in the oldest stock on redwood mudsills laid on soil. A perfect shear wall bolted to a foundation that cannot hold it is an expensive way to do nothing.
A shear wall or a moment frame transfers force into the foundation. If the foundation is unreinforced concrete, brick, or redwood on soil — all of which are common in this city — it has to be replaced or upgraded first, and that is frequently the larger number. It is also the most common reason a retrofit estimate doubles between the first conversation and the engineered drawings. Open it up early.
Establish these first
- What the building is
- Age, number of storeys, number of units, and the ground-floor configuration. Those four decide most of the scope.
- Whether it is a mandated retrofit
- A building in the city’s soft-storey programme has a compliance obligation and a deadline, which changes the conversation entirely.
- The existing foundation
- What it actually is, not what the drawings say. This is worth opening up before anybody designs anything bolted to it.
- Access and staging
- Narrow attached lots leave very little room. Where the equipment goes and where the spoil goes are real cost lines.
- Occupancy
- Whether tenants stay in place, which governs the sequence, the hours and the notices.
What you receive
Engineer’s calculations, permit set, special inspection records, final sign-off
Plus the things that are not documents: a schedule you can plan around, a written allowance for anything genuinely unknown, and a named person who answers the telephone. See how the money works.
A 3.2 Prices
What this scope costs
Planning ranges, wide on purpose. The full sheet with every scope on it, and a note on what moves a number to the top or the bottom of its range, is on the prices page.
| Item | Description | Unit | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| C.10 | Soft-storey retrofit, small building Two to four units, engineered frames and walls | LS | $95,000–$260,000 |
| C.20 | Soft-storey retrofit, larger building Five or more units | LS | $220,000–$680,000 |
| C.30 | Steel moment frame, installed Fabricated, set, welded, inspected | EA | $38,000–$110,000 |
| C.40 | Plywood shear wall with holdowns Including opening up, nailing schedule, inspection | LF | $420–$980 |
| C.50 | Foundation replacement Sequential removal and replacement under an occupied building | LF | $1,100–$2,800 |
| C.60 | Underpinning, sequential To gain height or to support new load | LF | $1,400–$3,200 |
| C.70 | Cripple wall bracing and bolting Where a crawl space exists | LF | $180–$420 |
| C.80 | Special inspection Independent, required on most of the above | LS | $6,500–$32,000 |
Units are SF square foot of the area being built, LF linear foot, CY cubic yard, SQ roofing square (100 SF), EA each, LS lump sum. A square-foot rate is for the area of new or renovated space, not for the whole house.
Prices are USD planning ranges for San Francisco residential work, exclude design and engineering fees, city permit and impact fees, geotechnical and hazardous-materials assessment, furnishings and any applicable tax, and assume normal access and no undisclosed conditions. Durations are planning ranges that assume no discretionary review and one round of plan-check corrections. They are published so an owner can plan before spending money on drawings. They are planning ranges, not a bid. Reviewed October 2026. A price and a schedule for your project come from a written proposal against a defined scope. See the disclaimer.
A 3.3 Questions
Questions about this scope
Specific to this kind of project. The general ones — contracts, deposits, allowances, change orders, insurance, who does what — are on the FAQ page.
Is my building in the mandatory retrofit programme?
The city’s programme applies to wood-frame buildings of a certain age and size with a soft, weak or open-front ground storey, and the city notifies owners of qualifying buildings directly. If you have had a notice, you have an obligation and a deadline. If you have not, you may still have a soft storey and it may still be the best money you spend on the building. We can tell you which category you are in from a visit and the address.
Can tenants stay in the building during a retrofit?
On most soft-storey retrofits, yes, and that is one of the things the programme was designed to make possible. The work is concentrated in the ground floor and the garage, it is noisy and disruptive during working hours, and parking is usually lost for the duration. Where a foundation is being replaced under an occupied building, the sequence is staged so that no part of the structure is ever unsupported. Notices, hours and access are governed by law, not by our preference.
Will a retrofit stop my house being damaged in an earthquake?
No, and anybody who tells you otherwise is overselling. The purpose of a residential seismic retrofit is that the building does not collapse and the people in it get out, and that after a design-level event it is repairable rather than a write-off. Damage is expected. That is a genuinely worthwhile outcome and it is not the same as the building being fine, which is the thing owners most often assume they are buying.
Who designs it?
A licensed structural engineer, retained by you or brought in by us, and the drawings are theirs and stamped by them. We build to those drawings and we say so plainly: a contractor who offers to design your lateral system is a contractor offering to do something they are not licensed for. What we do bring to the design stage is buildability — whether a frame can actually be got into that garage, and what it costs if it cannot.
A 0.0 The other scopes
The other four
Each accented by the phase that dominates its schedule, which is where you should expect the surprises.
Adding to a San Francisco house — out the back, up a storey, or down into the ground floor. The construction is ordinary; the entitlement almost never is.
- You receive
- Permit set, structural calculations, final inspection sign-off, as-builts
A second unit in the ground floor, the garage or the back yard. State law has made the approval path faster and more predictable than almost anything else in this city.
- You receive
- Permit set, separate utility documentation, final sign-off, warranty package
Renovating a small apartment building around the people who live in it. The sequence is set by habitability and access rules, not by what is convenient.
- You receive
- Permit set, tenant notices and schedules, inspection records, as-builts
A house on an infill lot, or a rebuild behind a facade the city will not let you remove. The longest schedules on this site, and the ones where entitlement dominates most.
- You receive
- Full permit set, structural and energy documentation, certificate of final completion
Tell us about the building
What it is, roughly when it was built, what you want to do to it, and whether anybody is living in it. On a first call we can usually tell you which approval path you are on, what the realistic end-to-end schedule looks like, and what about your project is most likely to go sideways.
Trico Construction, LLC · 981 Howard St, San Francisco, CA 94103